War Leaks Resources

2010 was, in many ways, the year of the WikiLeaks. Although the organization had been in operation for four years, and had published many high profile leaks, this was the year that WikiLeaks became a household name. Beginning April 2010, WikiLeaks released a succession of leaks apparently sourced from within the United States government, or military, and pertaining to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. WL Central's Kevin Gosztala investigated the War Leaks and produced this valuable summary and analysis of their extent and significance. This page is an overview and resource bank.

On 5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. The video instantly garnered the attention of news organizations around the world.

On July 25th and October 22nd WikiLeaks released two large collections of military communiques from the United States military. The communiques were SIGACTS - reports of significant actions, sent by forces on the ground to a central military intelligence database. In the first release, approx 90,000 SIGACTS from the Afghanistan conflict were released. In the second, WikiLeaks released approx 400,000 from the Iraq conflict. WikiLeaks collaborated for their releases with Der Spiegel, The New York Times and The Guardian, and for the second release brought on board SVG, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Le Monde Al Jazeera and Channel 4. The escalating global reaction to these, the largest military intelligence leak in history, served as the precursor to the Cablegate leak, which began in November 2010, and is ongoing.